'Marco Polo Economics' and Narrative in the NBER Soviet Growth Study

In his 1962 NBER volume, Growth of Industrial Production in the Soviet Union, Warren Nutter writes about how the study of the Soviet economy was hamstrung by official secrecy and misinformation. Western economists were forced to rely on what Nutter called “Marco Polo economics” or “travelers’ tales” to replace or interpret quantitative data. Nutter’s book is littered with these tales of Soviet economic activity from Soviet emigres, foreign visitors, and reports of Soviet citizens. The tales provide a narrative grounding for Growth of Industrial Production in the Soviet Union by outlining the flow of data through the Soviet statistical bureaucracy, establishing the reliability of Soviet data, and aiding in the interpretation of difficult to measure concepts like product quality or military production